Boom boom boom

[gamemakers]

Who| ALL people who call the Tribute center home, and anyone who might have been there on business.
What| Lock down
Where| Around the Capitol, and in the Tribute Center.
When| Feel free to tag in if you died any time in the first 3 weeks. (So if you die tomorrow, you can feel free to back tag in, if you like)
Warnings/Notes| Use this post both for threads before, around the city, and after the Peacekeepers and Avoxes gather everyone. More information about the state of the city after this will come tomorrow in the Deathroll. If your tribute character is out and about, they should expect Peacekeepers to escort them back within 15-20 minutes (and you can feel free to handwave the peacekeepers)

The people lurking around the docks, wearing plain clothes, rough clothes, might stand out among the Capitol Citizens if 'District chic' wasn't a style that came and went on a regular basis. As it was, they barely stood out, people trying too hard to look like they didn't belong and that they did, at the same time. 

Sorta like everyone else around them. It was hard to act suspicious in the Capitol.

It was a bit strange, people getting on the Shore to Shore boat dressed like that. Not normally what anyone would consider club wear, but 'normal' was not highly regarded around these parts.

However, it wasn't long after the boat had left the dock that it made it's grand exit.

In an explosion that sent a fireball high into the night sky, lighting up the bay, and sending high waves lapping at the shore, the boat was obliterated. Rescue operation were swift, but there just wasn't much left to rescue.

Siren's filled the city, automated voices urging people from every street corner to return home, lock the doors, stay inside. And for the Tributes wandering the city, it was more then automated urging. Those in the Tribute training center were gather up by Avoxes, and brought down to the common room, the elevator refusing to work for anyone who wasn't in the process of gathering up Tributes, Mentors, Stylist...anyone lingering in the building.

Those Tributes not already at home found themselves flanked by Peacekeepers and escorted back, deposited in the same common room, and told to wait. 

Eventually, hours later, everyone was cleared and the elevator opened, although the front doors still refused to allow anyone out without a special clearance no one was being offered. A recorded voice told them emergency alert instructions would be available for them in the morning. And then their doors locked behind them for the night.

Comments

[vissernone]

"It got easier." She gives his shoulder a soft squeeze. "It will for you, too."

The human mind can eventually become numb to anything. Or he'll die. Either way, from apathy or death, it'll be an escape. Eva's long retreated into the shadowy land of detachment.

"Here, if you don't feel like you're going to vomit again, I'll have an Avox clean this up and show you a place to lie down. I'll keep you company, if you want. I've always found it helps."

Having someone to talk to, even just to chatter inanely, seems a better alternative than dipping into ugly memories.

[downbeat]

"I'm fine," he says, although he knows it isn't true. His mind is on the way he'll look if he stumbles up from the ground with his knees knocking and his limbs trembling. Can he even support his own weight? He's barely eaten, barely slept since arriving back at the Capitol. His fingers keep going numb, and sometimes he forgets to breathe.

No. No, he'd rather stay down here.

"What's happening?" he asks instead. He keeps the trash can close to his face, his fingers curled around the rim.

[vissernone]

"Alright." In that case, she decides she'll stay until her presence seems unwelcome, or until she's needed elsewhere. Unlikely, given that her sole dead Tribute seems capable of caring for himself.

"Nothing you need to worry about right now. For the moment, you're safe. Focus on that." Who needs to hear about boats exploding under mysterious circumstances when they're already suffering the aftershocks of other evils?

[downbeat]

"We're never safe," he says with a rolling, sardonic laugh, bending his head so far into the trash can that his forehead brushes against the plastic. "We're never safe."

[vissernone]

"Well. Physically safe. For a given value of that." She pats his shoulder. "If anyone comes after you right now I'll give them a stern and terrifying lecture, so you're alright for the moment. Now get your head out of there, you're going to make yourself sicker. You need to maintain yourself physically or you'll make it all worse."

She drums her fingernails over her cheekbone, watching the other Tributes, incapable of seeing anything but the parallels to when she was one of them so many years ago - and seeing the differences, between children sentenced to die and adults sentenced to be resurrected.

"Trust me on this one."

[downbeat]

The confidence in her voice, the sternness, is enough to snap Katurian out of his self-pitying spiral. Before he knows it, he's lowering the trash can and placing it on the floor before him. He re-evaluates her gentle singing, her calming touches, her misdirection about a stomach bug, and he realizes how strange this all is, her helping him. This woman isn't his mentor. She is representing some other district (7 or 8 or 9 or whatever) and teaching some other set of tributes how to kill.

He follows her gaze to the other tributes.

"How long has it been?" he asks quietly. "For you."

[vissernone]

"Thirty-eight years. I was sixteen." Doubtlessly he can figure out that she's a murderer, in that regard. No one would look at one of the old Mentors and assume that they survived their Arena by hiding it out. "Come on, stand up, if you fall down I've got surprising upper body strength."

Now that no one dies for good, in a way, they're all in this together. She'll give preferential treatment to her own Tributes and play the game, but everyone's the same, here, scared and trapped, except the ones she wants nothing to do with, the excited bloodthirsty ones.

It's in her nature to want to fix things, the small things she can try to help. She's so helpless in her guise as an obedient citizen, watching terrible things happen, that she's leapt at the opportunity to alleviate some hurt. She stands by and watches horrors enough.

[downbeat]

"Sixteen," he echoes. He pictures her young, because oh, they were always young back then, and now he knows. Now he knows. He tries -- and fails -- to suppress a shudder, and suddenly he needs to retch again, his hands fumbling to recover the trash can. Nothing comes up, and instead he hangs over it, frozen, his brow sweating and his limbs trembling.

Sixteen. Sixteen. Sixteen.

"Fuck," he breathes.

[vissernone]

"Okay, okay." She reaches for his shoulder, but rather than merely gentle her grip is firm and steadying. "It's over. What they did to you in that arena is over. What happened to me is over. Just let it wash over you and wash away."

He looks as if he's about to keel over. She braces herself to catch him if he does.

She wishes she could say it's all over, not just for the prior arena but for any arena.

[downbeat]

"I'm so sorry," he slurs, and then suddenly he's crying, sobbing brokenly as though a switch had been flipped inside of him. He leans into Eva's touch and he sobs. He covers his face with his hands and he sobs. He thinks about dying children and his brother tied to the attic bed and pillows and harpoons and gaping mouths and then nothing, because when he digs deep down into it, the only thing he's really aware of when he's crying are the tears.

He's had crying spells long before the arena. At work. In the market. Rolled up in his covers at night, trying to sleep. It's almost comforting in how normal it is. Like washing over, like washing away.

[vissernone]

"Shh, it's alright. I've got you." She pulls him into her and rubs his back, steadying them both with her other hand against the wall. She shifts effortlessly, unconsciously from that practical and no-nonsense approach back to warm and accommodating, and she lets him cry.

The way her son let her cry when he was only ten years old and couldn't understand why Mom was ripping her hair out and scrubbing her skin with the wire sponge.

"It's alright. This is a normal reaction. This is normal." She turns a bit so that her back is blocking the view of the other Tributes. She can't do anything about the sound of sobbing, but she can afford a little visual protection.

[downbeat]

It goes on for a long time. Minutes. The whole while he says nothing, only cries and cries and cries, but he doesn't pull away from her, this woman he's only known for five minutes. When it's over, finally, when the last shudder has passed through his body, he lifts his head and looks up at her with wide eyes as though just realizing she was there.

It's not wholly inaccurate.

"Oh my God," he whispers, clutching his hand over his mouth. Context, shame, fear all flow back to him. "Oh my God, I'm-- I shouldn't--"

He makes an attempt to stand up, but his balance is all wrong. He doesn't even manage to lift himself off his knees before sliding (stumbling, tripping) back to his old position and practically falling on Eva.

[vissernone]

As the minutes, she tries to anchor her mind to the here and now, rather than letting it waft back into reminiscing. She strokes at Katurian's hair slightly, then stops herself; that's wholly inappropriate for a stranger.

She catches him when he stumbles, one arm coming around his waist and the other around his back. "Alright, alright, stand up. I've got you, there's a wall here if you need to balance."

The mother-knows-best voice comes back, although the warmth is not gone from her body language. "You need to lie down, and not on the floor. And then you'll need to eat. Don't sleep and you'll hallucinate, don't eat and you'll ruminate."

[downbeat]

If this were any other situation, Katurian would run. He would say thank you, but no thank you and then he would disappear into a bathroom, into a hallway, anywhere where he could hide his shame and find his footing once more. As it stands, he's trapped in this room with his failures, with a man he helped murder, with this woman who knows what he looks like when he breaks. He gets to his feet with her help because there is nothing else he can do. He follows momentum. He is a marionette.

"I'm sorry," he says again, lamely. He doesn't know what else he can say.

[vissernone]

"Don't be." She leads him over to one of the couches, quickly enough that they don't lose that forward motion but not so quickly that she topples him again. "Don't start acting like this is anything to be ashamed of. It's a bad cycle."

And not one she really appreciates either, even if she understands shame rather well. She bends to help him onto the couch.

[downbeat]

His body folds down onto the couch, his joints bending easily. This is nice, this solid, yet giving structure. This is what his body needs right now.

"I'm not like this usually," he says. "I'm usually-- I'm usually very well put together, I usually get through these things, because there's no other option besides that, getting through, and I'm typically very good at it."

He's rambling. Now that he's aware of the silence, his position, it's impossible not to fill it. He speaks to bury his thoughts. His memories.

"But like you said, don't eat or sleep or-- whatever, etcetera, so I think that's just what I need. That's just what I need. I'll get better."

[vissernone]

Everything he's saying has just enough truth that it's easy to ignore that he's trying to convince himself. Eva tells herself it's the truth too.

"I believe you. You will." She sits next to his head on the couch, shielding his face, at least, from the other people in the room. "Your body just needs to process it, and then you can set it aside."

She looks out at the other Tributes, resembling a watchdog looking after a sleeping master. She can be intimidating when she uses the right muscles in her face, the ones that tighten her lips and the ones under her eyes, right around her nostrils.

"Once you feel like you can keep something down I'll find you some juice and candy. Can't let the blood sugar get low."